Guild Wars 2

My guild is doing a little 1v1 tournament for fun and I wanted to take my Ele(although we’re allowed to switch classes in between matches) and I was wondering what would be the best spec for general dueling. I know that my guild is bringing in a lot of Mesmers and Thieves and a few Guards.
I was thinking a Scepter build would be good, although I undoubtedly prefer Daggers. You guys got anything fun, but also effective?

Two allround effective dueling specs are the meta dd ele, and a 66002 S/F ele.

Besides those 2, there is a lot of potential for ‘build wars’, mostly springing from the earth magic trait line.

You can build near-immunity to direct damage with an apothecary signet condi ele, sitting at absurd amounts of armor (3.5k+ if I’m not mistaken). This spec easily destroys heavily power-based matchups.

Diamond skin on the other hand hard-counters a lot of the condi specs running around.

Both the counter builds suffer in general versatility though. Also, while there are certain specs that can be very troublesome for S/F glass, D/D has no such thing. Only very few matchups are not in your favor, and those that are are not impossible.

I’ve been using a 0/6/0/4/4 Fresh Air Scepter/Focus build for dueling. (100% zerker)

If you are good at picking out the mesmer from among the clones, you shouldnt have too much trouble with stealthing mesmers.

Thieves take a bit of practice to get used to fighting – the air auto attack will follow thieves in stealth once you channel it, much like a rapid fire, so if you channel it on a thief and he disapears, don’t cancel the channel.

the kill combo is airburst – Air 5 (Gale) Phoenix, lightning flash, arcane blast and another air burst. That will drop even zerker warriors down to about 15% and will drop any glass medium or light class.

Against condi tanks – it really depends on what you’re fighting. Swirling winds, and the magnetic wave are great at stopping P/D thieves. You should be able to ether renewal away most condition bombs. A good PU/Condi mesmer will probably eat your face if they can chain their stealth very well, simply because you need a target for your air burst and most of your auto attacks. So against a PU Mes, D/D is undoubtedly a better choice because you have access to AOE damage. Engineer is probably the second hardest condition spec to counter, you just need to try and end the fight as fast as possible.

Against other insta-gib power builds, like D/D thieves and axe/shield GS or GS/Rifle warriors, the best thing that you can do is sequence your blinds and invulnerabilities, (air and earth 3) and keep up pressure with air autos and such. Agaist a thief who only likes to Cloak and Dagger and then backstab, you should take Arcane shield and wait for the CnD, wait 2 seconds and phoenix behind you.

The reality of Dragon Tooth (Fire 2) is that you’re almost never going to make it land on an enemy – and it’s great for giving you clearance. Cast the tooth, and your enemy will move away from it. It can buy you some space and breathing room. I always try to get the wall of fire under the tooth so that I can build might with it. If i’m fighting a melee build, then i’ll use the magnetic wave to build might with, along with the dragon tooth. I’ve seen many S/F eles use Gale, and try to tooth and phoenix the CCed enemy. in my experience, taking the time to use the tooth will ruin your opportunity to burst. Perhaps 1 in 10 times you Gale, Tooth, Phoenix, both the tooth and phoenix will land.

any decent non afk thief will port away after being KD’d by gale. condi engy isn’t so bad you just need to be mindful of freeze nade/prybar/static shot.